Port Harcourt is the capital of Rivers State and a port town in southern Nigeria. It lies along the Bonny River (an eastern distributary of the Niger), 41 miles (66 km) upstream from the Gulf of Guinea. Founded in 1912 in an area traditionally inhabited by the Ikwerre people, an Igbo subgroup, it serves as a port, named for Lewis Harcourt - the colonial secretary. Port Harcourt has long been an important merchant port and is today the centre of Nigeria’s oil industry. Its exports include petroleum, coal, tin, palm products, cocoa, and groundnuts. Among the industries of the area are timber processing, car manufacturing, food and tobacco processing, and the manufacture of rubber, glass, metal, and paper products, cement, petroleum products, paint, enamelware, bicycles, furniture, and soap.

Port Harcourt was a site for World War I military operations against German Kamerun; it was once part of the Republic of Biafra which seceded from Nigeria and was dissolved in 1970. Commercial quantities of crude oil was discovered in Oloibiri in 1956 and Port Harcourt's economy turned to petroleum when the first shipment of Nigerian crude oil was exported through the city in 1958. Through the benefits of the Nigerian petroleum industry Port Harcourt was further developed with aspects of modernisation such as overpasses and city blocks. Oil firms that currently have offices in the city include Royal Dutch Shell and Chevron.